FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT LAW FIRM - PAGE 2

NEW DELHI: While India is yet to make up its mind on letting foreign legal firms into the country, a UK-based law firm has launched a portal offering Indians advisory services ranging from buying a house to setting up a business to marriage and divorce. Net Lawman's portal www.netlawman.co.in not only brings the concept of online legal services to India, but seeks to make the process cheaper than visiting a solicitor's office. Another service that clients can avail of is legal clarifications at Rs 500 per question, Net Lawman said in a release.

JET Airways (India) has hired a US law firm, Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, to press legal charges against the president & chief executive officer of the US firm Jet Airways Inc, Nancy Heckerman. The move comes more than a fortnight after the US firm made charges about Jet's alleged links with the Al Qaeda, which have led to a delay in the Indian airline major getting the US government's clearances to operate flights to the United Sates. Ms Heckerman has made "scandalous, scurrilous and baseless allegations regarding alleged links of Jet Airways (India)

JET Airways (India) has hired a US law firm, Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, to press legal charges against the president & chief executive officer of the US firm Jet Airways Inc, Nancy Heckerman. The move comes more than a fortnight after the US firm made charges about Jet's alleged links with the Al Qaeda, which have led to a delay in the Indian airline major getting the US government's clearances to operate flights to the United Sates. Ms Heckerman has made "scandalous, scurrilous and baseless allegations regarding alleged links of Jet Airways (India)

MUMBAI: Indian law firms are deviating from hourly billing to a fixedpricing model for undertaking transaction work such as drawing up deal documents, a transition that will give clients a better estimate on the legal cost and help reduce the possibility of fee disputes. According to lawyers, the concept that has been evolving for some years is now being formalised. "We have recently formalised what we call happiness billing," said Nishith Desai, managing partner of a law firm by his name.

MUMBAI: Policy and regulatory work helped Indian law firms make up for the lower revenues from merger and acquisition deals, private equities and capital markets, according to RSG Consulting , a London-based research firm. The research firm's latest India report says that the rise in litigation and arbitration work has also fuelled the growth of boutique firms that have been able to pick up new clients without the resources required to support big transactional matter. "Last year we thought growth would be stagnant, but when the year ended, it registered a growth of 18% revenue," said Berjis Desai, senior partner of law firm J Sagar Associates . "Although areas like M&A, private equity and capital markets were down, what made up for it were policy, regulatory matters and dispute resolution.

MUMBAI: Law firms have seen a near halving of the fees they charge for documentation work on non-convertible debentures or NCDs since the beginning of the year due to increased competition as more lawyers are lining up for structuring the debt instruments that an increasing number of companies are using to raise funds. "Law firms are bidding Rs 2-3 lakh for work that until the start of this year would have fetched a fee of Rs 4-5 lakh," the promoter of a mid-sized law firm said on condition of anonymity.

Scheduled for one hour, our interview with Cyril Shroff stretches to one-and-a-half hours and then to two hours, with the photo shoot. If law firms charged newspapers for their managing partner's time, Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff would have billed us several lakhs. But if he's concerned about the time we're taking, Shroff shows no signs. Like several other CEOs we've met, he has this uncanny ability to stay focused on the person he's with. "People think we lawyers are only in the business of talking," he says.

She runs a law firm, but doesn't have a formal degree in law! Sounds bizarre? Manju Mohotra does exactly that, and does it well. As the CEO of Dhir & Dhir , a Delhi-based law firm, she deals with serious issues like financial restructuring, but there was a time when she wanted to dabble in design for the rest of her life. Grand-daughter of a lawyer and the wife of a retired Air Commodore with the Indian Air Force, Manju loved interiors and designing, and dreamt of owning a boutique, but ended up in a law firm in 1998 when she joined Singhania & Co. The move was more of an accident rather than a well-planned career progression.

MUMBAI: The warring managing partners of the country's largest law firm, Amarchand Mangaldas & Suresh & Shroff & Co (AMSS), brothers Shardul and Cyril Shroff have agreed to try mediation in an effort to resolve a dispute over the provisions in their late mother's will. The brothers have appointed Nimesh Kampani , the founder of JM Financial, retired Supreme Court Judge Justice BN Srikrishna and Senior Advocate Harish Salve as mediators. On Tuesday, Justice RD Dhanuka directed that the mediators should attempt to end the dispute by December 31, 2014.

MUMBAI: Singhania & Partners, a Delhi-based law firm and Mumbai-based Rajani Associates will merge to become Rajani, Singhania & Partners, in a move to gain a footprint in leading metros in the country. The merger, effective from November 1, 2013, will enable the merged firm to have a national presence in the legal space with 18 partners and a roster of 100 lawyers, two people familiar with the development said. Rajani and Singhania were both founded in the year 1999 in Mumbai and New Delhi, respectively, and have a presence in Bangalore and Hyderabad as well.